


Vivat Regina

by Almighty_Hat



Category: Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: Backwards And In Heels, Canon Compliant, Gen, POV Female Character, Peril, Present Tense, Spoilers, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 05:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4209495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Almighty_Hat/pseuds/Almighty_Hat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Jurassic World, Claire Dearing, standing in front of the terrible lizard, flare in hand </p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>Gray counts, and Claire ignores it if it keeps him from screaming, but then he comes to a total and says, "We need more teeth."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Vivat Regina

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tigriswolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/gifts).



> From the commentfic meme [here.](http://aceofannwn.dreamwidth.org/1045.html?thread=1045#cmt1045) It's a baby meme, still growing, come join in.
> 
> I'm not sure what to warn for in this one besides SPOILERS, honestly; all the canon-typical violence is only barely touched on, there isn't really even any swearing, and Claire's so focused on the task in front of her that the actual ongoing massive dinosaur fight kind of gets brushed past. ... But I wrote the damn thing and re-reading it makes me shaky, so if you can think of a more concise warning than that, please let me know.

Gray counts, and Claire ignores it if it keeps him from screaming, but then he comes to a total and says, "We need more teeth."

He's not _wrong,_ and her first instinct is the tool-user instinct-- they need guns, weapons-- but there aren't really enough weapons anywhere she can find them on Isla Nublar, not anymore, and Claire knows Isla Nublar like the back of her hand.

She's always been good at delegation, and Claire _does_ know where to find a very fearsome set of teeth.

Whatever she did to keep the boys out of the I-Rex's way, she doesn't clearly remember. She remembers shouting at Lowery over the phone, but only vaguely what she said. She remembers seeing the gate to Paddock Nine start to open, and she clearly, clearly remembers the snap and hiss of the red flare.

Twenty-two years ago, the animal affectionately known as Rexie escaped her paddock, killed a lawyer, injured a mathematician, and terrorized a paleontologist and a pair of schoolchildren. She also saved four of Jurassic Park's six survivors from velociraptors ( _ill-socialized velociraptors oh god is that what's wrong with the Indominus--_ ), however inadvertently. 

Her scars are a tourist attraction all their own.

Her footsteps shake the ground, and Claire's heart shudders with each impact.

Claire waits for Rexie to come into view, to be sure she's being seen, but it's as though Rexie has been waiting ten years for the chance to leave her comfortable paddock and have the whole island at her disposal again.

They see each other.

Claire clawed her way up through sexism and hierarchy to her place as Operations Manager of Jurassic World. She has managed and resolved and soothed and hustled and denied and banned and threatened and offered. She's fought and fought and fought and _won,_ and always on her own terms.

Rexie ( _should be Regina--_ ) fought her only true contenders and won and _ruled_ a wild Isla Nublar for most of a decade.

They are the queens of this island, and they've both been turned into figureheads, given tiny slivers of false realities to rule and led to believe it is the whole world.

Claire's human usurper is dead, and to defeat the inhuman usurper, she needs more teeth. In the emergency lighting of the backstage area and the hot red glow of the flare, Rexie's teeth glint, the interlocking points of ragged crowns.

There is not room on this island for a third queen.

Claire turns to run, flare held like a scepter, and Rexie follows, thundering.

**Author's Note:**

> Jurassic World is one of those action movies where female characters are super-thin on the ground, and it's easy to look at Claire and dismiss her for her white silk suit and her professional walking pumps and her expensive angled bob and think she's just there to be pretty, she's just there to be a love interest.
> 
> Claire is the operations manager of Jurassic World. She runs the show. She doesn't design the exhibits or the attractions, she isn't hands-on with the animals or, frequently, the guests, but she's the one who makes sure everything runs, everything is coordinated, everything works. And her wardrobe is symbolism on so many layers that I'm probably not spotting more than three of them-- she starts off as our John Hammond expy, wearing crisp, weather-appropriate white (the cut of her jacket, the belt over it, is the barest nod to 'safari' fashion), and then when she signals she's "ready to go," rolling up her sleeves, tearing open her jacket, tying it around her waist to reveal her tank underneath, she becomes Ellie Sattler. She's level-headed, protective, useful; not an action hero in her own right but she can keep up perfectly fine on her own.
> 
> The heels stay on for the whole movie because she's Ginger Rogers, doing everything Fred Astaire does, backwards and in heels.
> 
> Claire was the first human character I started calling by her own name (rather than Edgar, Starlord, Harley Keener's Big Brother), and I'm super-grateful that Tigriswolf posted this prompt, and let me compare for a few heartbeats the two ladies who took over Isla Nublar in their own ways.
> 
> Long live the queens.


End file.
